Peel off the bubblewrap

The following also appears in the Life Section of today's Toronto Star, as part of a regular monthly column.

I only played with matches once in my life.

My mom was watching. She peered from around the corner as her little girl sat at the kitchen table and opened the matchbox. She watched while I took out a match. Watched as I lit it, then held it in my hand to study the flame. She watched it burn down to my fingertips, as I gasped and blew it out. Then she rushed in, kissed it better, and asked me to recite the lesson I had just learned.

I never played with matches again — because I learned you can get burned.

Modern parents, no doubt, would be shocked. We’re more than a little conflicted when it comes to letting our kids face consequences. We may know deep down that they should, but we can’t stand the thought. We prevent. We protect. We interfere.

We get rid of play structures that any child could possibly fall off. Drive the kids to school in case of random maniacs. God forbid they should ever throw snowballs in the schoolyard, ride scooters without a helmet or go to the park by themselves. We manage their relationships — with teachers, coaches, and through playmates.

When they are teens, we give them cellphones so they’re never far from our help or advice. We can even track them via GPS when they take the car.

Funny thing is, we are overprotecting the kids at a time when, by most measures, children and youth have never been safer. The paradox is that all our rules and coddling may actually be setting them up for danger.

This warning is issued by Michael Ungar in his new book Too Safe for Their Own Good: How Risk and Responsibility Help Teens Thrive. The Halifax social worker, who counsels troubled youth from a range of socio-economic backgrounds, explores how the bubble-wrapped childhood is robbing kids of the risk-taking and responsibilities they need to develop as healthy adults.

And worse, provoking them to seek it through reckless behaviour.

His analysis makes sense. Kids, and particularly adolescents, learn by taking chances, making judgments and experiencing mistakes. It’s called growing up. If we don’t allow them to do that by loosening the apron strings, they may bust out of them, and resort to more extreme measures: drugs and alcohol, running away, sexual promiscuity, gangs or crime.

Alternatively, they may flounder quietly, becoming depressed and compliant. Or turn into adults who just can’t cope.

“In our mania to provide emotional life jackets for our kids, helmets and seat belts, approved playground equipment, after-school supervision, an endless stream of evening programming, and no place to hang out but the local mall, we parents are accidentally creating a generation of youth who are not ready for life,” Ungar writes.

It’s hard to blame parents for all this. Over the past two decades, we have been inundated with parenting literature, experts, talk shows and coaches, all reinforcing the message that every single decision from the time of conception calls for huge angst and analysis; that anything we do will make or break our children; and instilling a false notion of what we can and should control.

Yet in the face of this booming child-rearing industry, 24-hour news stations blast us with a steady stream of bad news about how the kids are actually turning out. Young girls dressing like “prostitots.” Epidemics of online bullying. Gangs and guns. Binge drinking. Teen depression. The air of entitlement. Plagiarists. The narcissists of “Generation Me.”

Ungar’s book is refreshing for several reasons: He is practical rather than alarmist. He provides context for how we arrived at this parenting dilemma. He has a lot of faith in teens and what motivates them. And he has advice on how parents can start letting go.

He’s also an international expert on resilience, an approach that emphasizes promoting the positives instead of preventing the negatives. In other words, promoting conditions to help kids thrive, and building on their strengths and relationships, rather than focusing on zero tolerance.

In a recent phone interview, Ungar explained how Too Safe for Their Own Good emerged as a result of his observations over two decades working with youth. He noticed that many teens from disadvantaged families and living in dangerous neighbourhoods were faring well. At the same time, a growing number from stable, middle-class homes who had everything they needed and minimal exposure to danger were depressed, anxious and acting out in perilous ways. He wanted to explore the reasons.

He concluded that the key is found in four powerful messages that all kids, regardless of their background, need to hear from adults and peers. They need to feel that they belong, they are trustworthy, they are responsible and they are capable. And these all go hand-in-hand with taking on risk and responsibility.

For parents, it’s a balancing act that takes practice. Too much risk puts kids in danger; too little curbs their growth and psychological development.

But Ungar has suggestions, among them that parents need to take a hard look at where they can ease up on rules and when they need to clamp down. Allow kids space to express themselves — in their rooms, through music, or their hair colour. Instead of just saying no when your 15-year-old begs to go on an unsupervised weekend, suggest an alternative that will fulfill her craving for space or independence

See yourself as scaffolding rather than a life jacket. Be a supervisor, not a dictator.
“It’s not just about something inside a kid,” says Ungar.

"It’s about us providing opportunities for them to realize something powerful about themselves."

Comments

[Tanya Espanya]

I'm really intrigued by this book and have just put it on hold at the library. Thanks for writing about it.

[AReader]

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Recently I've been re-reading "Who Has Seen the Wind" by W.O. Mitchell. The story begins when the protagonist is four years old.

His young baby brother is ill, his grandmother wants him out of the house so the young baby won't be disturbed. She tells the four year old to go outside after breakfast and not to return until lunch. The four year old has the freedom of the town and goes to visit a few people.

The setting is a Prairie town during the depression.

How times have changed.

[Mike Rewegan]

I think the bit on Children/Risk Taking and Overprotective parents was summed up by George Carlin in his "You are all Diseased" release. Ungar just borrowed it and toned it down.